


The Return of the Medallion: Being the Seventeenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword, and the Medallion

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: The Medallion [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Another Adventure Begins!, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 04:43:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16509599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC
Summary: How the Narrator returned to the Realm once more.





	1. Adrift No More

The great fetid bulk of the vile and putrescent monster arose before me, writhing and uncoiling until its full hideous glory was exposed, the epitome of every nightmarish thing ever encompassed by the word ‘dragon’, and then its head reared back so that it could level its malevolent glare at me from glowing yellow eyes. Filled with the bright power of the Protectorship, I held my ground and glared back just as fiercely, unwavering before the basilisk gaze.

The moment seemed to hang outside of time: the quintessence of evil squared off against the champion of good in one last clash of wills, each straining to outlast the other. Part of me bemoaned the inevitability of it (“How do I keep getting myself into these messes?”), but another, larger part of me rejoiced in this knowledge: that, live or die, I was fulfilling my destiny; that I had not flinched away or fallen; and that, with the help of the One, I would not yield.

The dragon snapped its jaws at me, testing me to see if I would flee or lash out at it; either would serve its ends. Instead, I silently stood my ground, holding up the Coin at the dragon as I had once brandished the Medallion at it, but both of us knew that the Relic I held would not shield me from the dragon’s ire as its fellow had.

There is more than one way to shield something, though.

We were so intent on one another that the first few fat drops of rain caught us by surprise, but what caught me utterly off guard was how swiftly the rain went from drip to downpour. For the first time, I truly understood what the term cloudburst meant: despite how near we were to each other, I could only barely make out the hulking form of the dragon.

A billow of hot water flowed at me; obviously, the dragon had tried to breathe fire at me, but the rain was so thick and so cold now that all the dragon’s raging, wrath-fueled inner inferno could do was send mildly hot water at me. It was actually somewhat pitiful, and certainly rather humbling: I wasn’t even scalded, but the force of the rain was going to force me to seek shelter in another moment or two.

The dragon growled in frustration before snapping out, “There will be another time, a time when there is no rain to save you from your fate. For now, though, I leave you to your ‘victory’ here.” Then it was gone, and I was left to contemplate the wild meanderings of fate that had brought me to this point.

A Coin. A Sword. A Medallion.

Each of these has shaped my life in ways I could never have imagined before the fact, though their influence always becomes clear the moment I look back on it.

When I was just eleven, the Coin came into my life and brought me out of normality into a fantastical world wherein a quaint little kingdom known as the Realm lay in peril. I became the Young Protector, the latest in a grand tradition of Protectors of the Realm. The Coin brought me to the Realm many times over the course of the next two years, but once I finally saved that land from its looming peril, the Coin vanished.

Three years after that, I was returned to the Realm by a man from that Realm using the Coin; however, the Realm to which I was sent was the Realm of centuries before my first series of visits, so despite my gaining a good friend in the Heir Apparent of that era, I was still in exile. For this series of visits, I had to bear the Sword, carefully choosing when to use it and when to let it be.

Three years ago, I caused the Sword to sunder while trying to protect the Realm; when that happened, I was flung from the Realm back into this mundane reality, the reality that should have been my home. I was left to make my way in a world that no longer felt like I belonged in it, unaided by anything but my own efforts.

Some would have taken this as a mandate to change the world around them until it felt like they belonged in it again; I simply put my nose to the grindstone and held on to the hope of the promise I’d received: I would return to the Realm someday.

People say that _someday_ is a dodge to avoid saying _never_ , but this time, _someday_ has come at last.

_Someday_ is _now_.

And it began thus…

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Surprised by Joy

It started out as just another workday.

Now, if you’ve read my earlier accounts, you might wonder why I’m going to work at all, as my family (while not Carnegie, Astor or Rockefeller rich) was wealthy enough that I should have been able to remain idle as my parents had. My cousin was the culprit; he embezzled most of the money and fled to some South American country where the local banditos promptly stole from him what he’d stolen from me, and then they killed him. So the moral is: always make sure the place you’re fleeing to with your loot is a peaceful spot, like a Pacific island (one without the usual cannibalistic inhabitants).

Anyway, the point is that I’m just another working stiff by necessity, and by choice to a certain degree. I could have tried to make a big splash by starting a company or playing the markets or something like that, but ever since I finally got free of the System, I’ve wanted to avoid official attention, good or bad. I have papers stating I’m sane, but I can’t shake the feeling that they’d be treated like manumission papers in the Old South: ignored by the powers-that-be when it becomes convenient for them to do so.

Be that as it may, the day had been pretty normal from the morning rush to get washed up, dressed and off to work through the long day of watching pieces of metal go through the press one at a time to the mad scramble through every other working stiff’s ride home and back to my apartment. I mean, the manager of my complex stopped me to let me know that they’d be bug-bombing the place in a few days, but that was pretty well it until I walked into my bedroom.

“Wow. This place is a dump.”

I stopped dead at the musical yet snide voice letting me know exactly how little the speaker thought of my mode of living. I never have company. Even if I did, I always leave my apartment locked, so no one should be able to get inside without leaving signs of forced entry, which I’m always looking out for (see the desire to avoid official attention above). Therefore, there should be no one in my apartment, much less my bedroom, to snark at me.

Moving slowly, almost as if swift movement would break the spell, I turned to look in the direction the snarking had come from. The sight my eyes beheld flashed into my brain, sizzled down my spine and set off a host of very familiar and somewhat uncomfortable reactions, most of which did their best to strangle off any rational thought that would hinder their aims. A few ran counter to the others, though, and they assisted in my struggle not to lapse into utter idiocy at what, or rather who, I saw.

A beautiful woman in some ravishing array of silks lounged haughtily atop my bed. Well, it’s really a cot, since most of my furniture is camping gear, in case I have to head out on the run again, but that’s beside the point. The point is that beautiful women dressed in fabulous clothes do not generally put in appearances in my life, let alone my bed, so I was understandably perplexed, among the other reactions I alluded to earlier.

There was also something extremely familiar about this particular particularly gorgeous woman, though the connection in my mind was so far-fetched that I initially dismissed it as wishful thinking.

She spoke again in that wonderfully musical voice that yet dripped with honeyed scorn. “What a pig-sty.” Despite the venom in her words, I had to fight off another wave of incipient idiocy, so I remained silent.

Again, the extremely physical response my body had to her was not a new reaction, so I was sorta/kinda/halfway/partly (but not really) prepared for it, though I definitely hadn’t expected this… intense… of a reaction. This was going to be probably the most arduous fight against myself that I’d ever face, and certainly the longest, assuming…

Somewhat surreptitiously, I wrenched my eyes away from other places where they wanted to linger and tried to peek at a very specific part of her throat, this endeavor made a bit easier by the snooty tilt of her chin. Yes, there was the scar, though a bit faded now. Ah. I did know her. Yay.

Satisfied as to her identity, I finally asked the question uppermost in my mind: “How did you get here, Alamsta daughter of Alamanast King of the Realm (Twelfth of That Name)?”

Alamsta held up the Coin. “As Melegrethan did in the ages before me, so do I now, and for like reason.” All the hauteur melted from her face, revealing a desolation I’d only seen there one terrible time before.

I spoke at the same time as she did. “Alamanast is dying.”

Alamsta’s face tightened for a moment before she continued, “The Realm has been restored and reestablished among the community of nations in the world since the Awakening, but we still have enemies who would use any sign of weakness on our part—”

I interjected, “Such as a dying king.”

She nodded and continued, “—as an excuse to attempt to overrun the Realm.” She stopped and bit at her lip.

After a second, I continued for her. “The Realm needs a Protector, and I am the Young Protector; thus, you have sought me out here.”

She nodded, and something within me eased. “You are the Young Protector,” she agreed. “Are you ready to honor your oath?”

My face started to absolutely ache, perplexing me until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was smiling; beaming like a loon, in fact. I couldn’t think why, but at the same time, my heart was lighter than it had been in more years than I wanted to admit. “It will be my pleasure, Your Highness.”

Alamsta did something with the Coin that I couldn’t quite see, and the gray swirling mist of travel between worlds surrounded us once more…

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Well, Here We Go Again…

I think I may have alarmed Alamsta with my sudden surge of _joie de vivre_ ; my reaction when the Shade of the First Protector appeared to us during transit almost certainly did nothing to allay that alarm: I let out a yell that was half laugh. “JOEY!”

Now that it had been pointed out to me, I could see how the young boy Joey had become the elderly Carinste-Nonthe through the inevitable march of time. The First Protector winced from the volume of my yell, but smiled gently and nodded. “You always were a little thick on seeing the obvious, but it is good to see you as the man I knew you’d be.”

A little noise from beside me recalled my attention to Alamsta. Looking back and forth between them, I asked the First Protector, “Does she know who you are? Or, I mean, have the two of you spoken before?”

The First Protector’s smile grew bigger at my jumbled phrasings. “We have not. Alamsta, lone heiress to Alamanast, King of the Realm (Twelfth of That Name), I am the Shade of Carinste-Nonthe, the First Protector; I have had the honor of instructing and being instructed by the Young Protector beside you.”

A thought crossed my mind. “By the way,” I asked, “where’s Cookie?”

The First Protector rolled his eyes. “ _She_ is enjoying the rest she has earned after having put up with _me_ for far too many years; you will not see her again before the Last Time.”

Alamsta interjected what I was thinking. “Oh, _that_ isn’t ominous at _all_.”

Alamsta has this incredible facility for laying the sarcasm in her voice so thick that it almost takes on physical form; believe it or not, I actually missed that about her during the years we were separated. “But it _is_ rather par for the course,” I told her. “His warnings and advice tend towards the oblique, though their meanings tend to become obvious in hindsight, like everything else about life.”

The First Protector rolled his eyes again, though not unkindly. “They are only oblique to those facing the wrong way, but you have managed to use them well enough when you needed to.”

I frowned for the first time since seeing Alamsta again. “As I abused the Sword that it sundered?”

There was no alteration in the First Protector’s features. “The Sundering has happened before, and it shall happen again, though only at the greatest need; do not consider it a reflection upon the state of your soul, Young Protector.”

His words gave me comfort, though I knew that I’d only feel the truth of them were I somehow to bear the Sword again, as King Arthur had despaired after his sword broke until he received Excalibur from the Lady in the Lake. Bearing the Sword again was an event I wished both would and wouldn’t happen, because were I to bear the Sword again, it would mean I had need of it in the defense of the Realm. I was sort of still hoping that I could get the Realm out of its current predicament without fighting, though I knew it was most likely a vain hope.

The First Protector broke into my thoughts. “Such a hope is never entirely vain, but worthwhile in the entertaining, even if the hope goes unfulfilled.”

Alamsta frowned, tapping her foot against whatever we were standing on in impatience. “Is the usual length of the transit? I fear any delay will only aid our enemies.”

I shrugged. “When we get there never seems to be related to how long this part takes, so I wouldn’t worry.”

Not that that had ever stopped anyone from worrying; fortunately, the swirly silver and gray mist-stuff chose that moment to part and reveal…

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. …And--Loving It!

We were back in the same dingy room in the Hand-Spread Stop where I’d first been deposited in the Realm, and we were alone until I opened the door for Alamsta and several very worried people came rushing in. Alamsta was visibly less than pleased by this, but she held her tongue while the interlopers babbled out their confused and alarmed messages all at once in a jumbled cacophony that rivaled the intermingled and overlapping songs of certain popular musicals I’d seen for sheer dissonance. The whole scene put me in mind of the section of a very clever children’s novel that I’d perused recently that focused on the main character’s interactions with a character named Kakofonous A. Dischord and another named the Awful DYNNE (who mentions an ancestor, the Dreadful RAUW).

At any rate, the upshot was that a dragon was terrorizing various parts of the Realm from multiple directions all at once, so I needed to go everywhere simultaneously instantaneously to stop the dragon. The dragon was the wildest, fiercest, most horrible dragon anyone had ever seen, and nothing that anyone had tried to get it to stop or go away had even slowed it down so far.

I’ll give you one guess as to the identity of the dragon in question.

Once they were all finished with their terrified blather, I let out a long sigh of wearied resignation over how it looked like the Magician and I would be fighting each other for all eternity and got ready to go where my Protectorly instincts would take me.

Alamsta had not yet had her say, however, and as soon as the others stopped talking, she let fly. This had probably been in the building for some time, so I let her vent her spleen at them for a while.

I admit that I mostly tuned out what she was saying until I heard: “…The Young Protector and I will venture forth, find the dragon, and set things to rights.”

The look of horror on their faces probably matched my own expression, but I knew that for Alamsta and me to have the talk we needed to have, we needed to be alone. Shaking my head, I tried addressing the extraneous people in the room as I expected they were used to. “Depart, varlets!”

Yeah, even I didn’t take that silly command seriously; all I got from the others were a few smirks and raised eyebrows. So, I tried just talking to them. “OK, guys: Her Royal Highness and I need to have a quick confab here about how best to go about cleaning this mess up, so you need to skedaddle, alright? I’ll get about making the problem you’re so all fired up about vanish as soon as we’re done here.”

That seemed to satisfy them, or at least it got them to leave us alone. The last one out courteously shut the door behind him, whereupon I immediately rounded on Alamsta and asked her the question that had been on my lips since her declaration: “Are you out of your ever-loving mind? You’re the Heiress Apparent! You can’t go up against a dragon!”

“Perethegrast went out to battle against the Scowrers with you when he was the Heir Apparent.” Alamsta’s tone was as pugnacious as I’d ever heard it; she was certainly set on this course.

I flung my hands in the air in frustration. “Perry’s father, Alamanast King of the Realm (Second of That Name), wasn’t at death’s door at the time, and there was Narimsta besides as the spare heiress! Unless the Twelfth Alamanast managed to sire someone else, you’re it, Alamsta!”

Alamsta’s face tightened perceptibly at my statement, telling me something that I should have seen right from the beginning.

In a much calmer voice, I asked her, “You’re running away, aren’t you, Alamsta?” She flinched. “When his father was dying, Perry ran off by, well, running off, and you’re doing the same thing: now that your father is dying, you’re running off by trying to charge forth into battle so that you can ignore that your father is dying.”

At this last, Alamsta hung her head, and I knew that I had intuited the truth of the matter correctly.

Sympathetic though I might be to Alamsta’s pain, I knew I had to make her understand why what she wanted to do was not only wrong for her, but wrong for the Realm. “If you die without having borne a child, the Line of Magnatharast ends forever, and with it, the Realm. This means that you are literally the most important person in the Realm right now, up to and including His Majesty Alamanast.”

Alamsta raised her head and fired back, as I knew she would. “And how will it look to those who wish the Realm crushed underfoot were I to cower behind the Castle’s walls and let another fight and perhaps die in my stead?”

I had anticipated this objection, as it was probably the most heartfelt one Alamsta could raise. “The Realm needs you confidently seated on the Throne of your illustrious fathers, strong and steadfast against any who would threaten the Realm, rather than flinging yourself headlong into mortal danger and practically inviting death to take you out of their way.”

Alamsta actually listened to that one, mulling it over wordlessly for a few moments. Then she said quietly, “But that means you’ll have to go up against the dragon alone.”

I smiled. “Yeah, that’ll be a first.” I managed to pack almost as much sarcasm into that statement as Alamsta would have.

Alamsta slammed the Coin into my palm with such force that it stung. “Here. Take this to aid you.” She closed my fingers around the familiar disc. “Promise me that if the dragon has you where you’re about to… lose, that you’ll use it to get away and fight another day.”

I closed my eyes before replying, “I promised on the Sword that I would give my life for the Realm if need be; I will keep that promise, but I shall take this with me as you desire.”

Alamsta turned to face the dingy wall. “Go, then.”

I took a deep breath to brace myself, then I went to the door and stepped out from the hovel…

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Forged, But Not Counterfeit

The crowd of worrywarts fell away as I strode out of the Hand-Spread Stop’s yard and down one of the five roads leading from the junction known as the Hand-Spread just beyond it; it is possible that the mien of determination that hung about me frightened them off, or perhaps they wanted to bug Alamsta some more. Either way, I was alone for my walk into the unknown, and glad of it.

I had never taken this particular road, as I implied above, so I had only the most general of notions of what was ahead of me, though I was sure that that would soon include a Dragon. I thought back to my last encounter with the Dragon when he was a Dragon, and trembled. I had lost that encounter so badly that, to save me, the Sword had split asunder, hurling me and the three others with me at the time back to my world. Mind, that was where we’d needed to go at the time so that we could solve certain problems in my world, but the feeling of being cast out of Paradise still cast a pall over the memories.

I had lost the last encounter with the Dragon, even with the Sword to aid me; could I really hope to do any better with only the Coin, should the Sword disdain my need for it?

Would the Medallion also find me, or I it, as had happened before?

Should I take the Coin to the Reliquary within the Castle if it and I survived the coming encounter?

These and many other questions flowed through my head in a tangle of gloomy worry that was only barely alleviated by the memory of the First Protector’s reassurance that the Sundering was not a reflection on my (lack of) fitness to continue as the Young Protector.

I could see a column of smoke rising up ahead of me, but when I reached its source, I found something very different from the Dragon I’d expected: a smithy, certainly the largest one I’d ever seen and perhaps the largest one in the Realm; at least three forges were going at full… well, not steam, but whatever the equivalent for a forge would be. Pump, maybe, from the bellows?

At any rate, the smiths were working as fast as they could to smelt, forge, hammer, quench, temper, and so forth; one of their water troughs was filled with blades, spearheads and so forth in the final stages of cooling, and another was filling fast. It took them a while to take notice of me, but they were polite when they did at last, until I showed them the Coin.

They all knew what it was immediately, of course, but only as a Relic from Before the Realm, rather than as something that had been made by a smith like them; once I got them to stop being worried that they were talking to a Protector and look at it as smiths, they were absolutely transfixed by everything about it. They were able to tell me that it was incredibly old but well made, that magic was almost certainly involved in its forging, that the metal was one that was beyond their abilities but known of from legends, and that some of the markings it bore were the mark of the smithy and the date of its Coining.

More than that was beyond them, but since I wasn’t interested in what meal the smithy had eaten before forging the Coin, I was satisfied, so I took my leave from them and continued on down the road.

What seemed like only a moment later, a shadow passed over me, the ground trembling when it impacted the road just ahead of me. The Dragon roared so that the very forest itself seemed to quail before it, but it was slightly less effective on me than it should have been, because the dragon was facing the wrong way on the road.

I waited politely while the Dragon worked out its little mistake and lumbered its way around to face me. The Sword still had not appeared in my hand, but a not unpleasant tingling filled my palm, telling me that the Coin was with me. I braced myself for the coming battle…

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. Victory from Defeat, and Vice Versa

So, here we are, right where I chose to begin this latest recounting: in a face-off with the Dragon. Enough words may have intervened between here and there that I need to remind you of what happened; in short, I held out the Coin, it called forth an absolute flood of a rain, and the Dragon retreated, vowing it would defeat me and bring the Realm to ruin.

Moments later, the rain stopped, but the Dragon stayed away; I think the rain was following it to make sure it kept away. Once I was certain that it wasn’t going to return, I started heading for the Castle, where Alamsta was and where the Reliquary was; it was in the Reliquary that I had had most of my conversations with the Shade of the First Protector, and it was in the Reliquary that I customarily found the Medallion. Thus it was that I felt impelled to go to the Castle, which meant cutting through the forests on the shepherds’ paths that crisscrossed each part.

I would also need to avoid some of the more unusual and dangerous denizens of the Realm: the Terror Wings (assuming any had survived the Scowrers); the Striped Death Mold (yeah, this would still be around when nothing else was); and, of course, the sporks. Terror Wings were huge flightless birds that would eat you if you got too near them; Striped Death Mold would send deadly spores out at you if you got too near them; and sporks were a weird combination of land piranha and termite that looked like the spoon and fork combination that they were named after, and they’d eat you if you got too near them. Have you noticed the pattern there?

Mostly, avoiding these dangers simply meant keeping a sharp eye out for their danger boundaries, which were obvious to the experienced eye, unless the eye was attached to a very preoccupied brain. Inattention had nearly been my downfall several times in these woods, since every time I was going through them, I had Important Things to think about. This time, I was determined to avoid that, since all my cogitations would do no one any good if I wound up dead in the forest without sharing them with anyone (not that they tended to be that great when I did share them with someone else, but still).

I was still a bit wary of other dangers, ones I’d encountered but a few times in these woods, though those encounters had been fraught enough that I was, as I said, still a bit wary. My wariness was why I spotted the ghostly form of the War Witch long before it reached me, though I refused to flee from it.

As it drew nearer, I could see that the ghost was none of the three spooks that had assaulted me on my first visit to the Realm, as I had thought, but was instead Dark Alamsta, the daughter of Alamanast King of the Realm (Second of That Name) who had given herself over to the Darkness and become the Scowrers’ War Witch. After I had defeated her, the Dragon had eaten her before my eyes. Rather, in a final act of spite, she had jumped into its jaws rather than seek the redemption I had offered for her. “Your fears are justified, you know, Young Protector.” The last two words were spat at me with such venom that I instinctively flinched. “You are lacking the Sword, lacking your furry friends, and lacking in the moral fiber you would need to survive if I chose to attack you. I won’t attack you, though; all I wish to do is talk.”

Dark Alamsta seemed offended when I burst into sarcastic laughter at her statement; in fact, she looked ready to contradict herself and attack me…

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. Blundering On

I could practically see sparks shooting from Dark Alamsta’s eyes as I laughed. “What is so funny?” She bit out each word, which only made me laugh harder; this was genuine laughter, rather than the sarcastic laughter with which I’d greeted her declaration of a desire to parley.

Finally, I calmed down enough to tell her, “That you aren’t attacking me tells me that you can’t attack me, since if you could, you would.”

This simple bit of deduction actually took the ghost of the War Witch aback; I think that since she had been so successful at fooling people for her whole life her failure to fool me for even a second utterly nonplussed her. “Well—you’re wrong!” was the best retort she could manage, and that only after a full ten seconds of silence.

I smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m afraid that you’ll actually have to prove to me that I’m wrong before I’ll believe you.”

Dark Alamsta didn’t move, though her faux casual aura had been replaced with one of sheer hostility.

I laughed again. “So, you ‘only’ want to talk, do you? Methinks that talking is the only way you can possibly hurt me—by trying to break me, or wear me down, or just mislead me: I’ve seen all of these tried on others and on myself. I know that anything you say is in that vein, whether it be true, false, or somewhere in between.”

Still Dark Alamsta didn’t move; I had expected that if I was wrong about her (lack of) ability to hurt me, this would be the time that she’d strike out, just to prove me wrong. This was when I noticed something else I should have caught on to much earlier than I did.

I tried for a casual tone as I asked her, “Why are you standing _just_ there?” Dark Alamsta had come to a stop in a very particular spot about ten feet away from where I’d stopped, and she hadn’t budged an inch during our little confrontation.

Dark Alamsta smiled at the question. Nothing good has ever come of a smile like that one. “Why? Are you… looking for _something_ that might be waiting for you to find it? Are you willing to trust your little deduction enough to try to brush me aside and find out why I’m standing _just here_?”

Assuming a contemplative mien, I turned the Coin over in my hands a few times. “The Power of the Coin is that of Gaining Aid; it just brought forth a rainstorm to Aid me against the Dragon. Shall we see what it might bring forth to Aid me against you?”

With a hail of sulfurous curses, Dark Alamsta vanished.

Now, I’m not _quite_ fool enough to have immediately gone over to where she’d been standing and get a face full of Striped Death Mold spores, thank you very much; instead, I waited a few seconds, tossed a few pebbles at the spot to see if anything jumped out at me, and _then_ went over to see if my other suspicion had proved to be correct.

After brushing away as much of the adjacent ring of Striped Death Mold as I could with a convenient branch, I gave up and used another convenient branch (gee, you’d almost think I was in the middle of a forest, wouldn’t you?) to fish at the clear spot in the center of the ring.

_Tack! Tack!_ The stick finally made contact with what I’d expected: the Medallion was there, but I would have to trust that I would be protected from the Striped Death Mold in order to retrieve it.

As I told my Alamsta, I long ago swore on the Sword that I would risk everything I had and everything I was or would be that the Realm would survive; the Realm could not survive unless I had the Medallion, so, after a moment of bracing myself, I reached out my arm and leaned over the Striped Death Mold, my fingers seeking the Medallion…

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. Chapter 8

Seriously, sometimes I’m an idiot; fortunately, my idiocy has not been the death of me just yet, because the One has judged that I still have a part to play in the event that must soon unfold.

See, I was pretty sure the Medallion would Shield me from the Striped Death Mold all around it, even though I hadn’t touched it yet, because I am the Young Protector, and I was trying to reclaim the Medallion so that I might Protect the Realm.

The Striped Death Mold absolutely plastered me with spores; they were highly acidic and so quite painful, until I managed to grab the Medallion. It was a little bit harder than it sounds, because some of the spores got into my eyes and blinded me, so I had to feel around for the Medallion for a few agony-filled moments.

The Power of the Medallion is the Power of Shielding… of _Curing_ , and of _Healing_. As soon as I touched it, the Medallion Cured me; a moment later, it Healed me. I knew immediately what had happened; I should have known that this was what would happen before I reached out for the Medallion.

As I stood, the Medallion Shielded me against another flurry of spores from the Striped Death Mold, but I didn’t notice, since I was absorbed in yet another thing I’d just noticed about the Medallion: it had a set of little hooks on the back that looked to be just the right size to—

The Coin slid into place behind the Medallion with a solid sounding _click_ , though when I donned the Medallion, it didn’t feel any heavier.

The rest of my journey to the Castle was as uneventful as I’d anticipated it to be once I had the Medallion, though I was still a bit nervous about what I would find in the Reliquary.

You know, it seems like recently every time I’ve been afraid of something bad happening, something happen to show me that I needn’t have been afraid; despite this, I can’t seem to stop myself from being afraid, though I don’t let the fear hold me back from my duty.

Be that as it may, the Castle was in quite good shape by now; as I approached it, it seemed to me that I’d never seen it in a better state of upkeep, cleanliness and repair. Maybe Alamsta had managed to get the various castle servants to snap to a little better than her more easygoing father had, or maybe they just had better soap now.

The guards were ones I recognized from my earlier visits; whether or not they also recognized the man I’d become as the boy I’d been then, they snapped to at the sight of the Medallion and allowed me to enter.

It’s a long way from the Castle gates to the Reliquary, and a winding and twisting way at that. It took me a significant amount of time to reach that particular chamber atop the Tower of the Protectors, but when I did, I found the Shade of the First Protector awaiting me as usual.

Before the Shade could greet me, I asked him, “So, was I right in my pessimism about Dark Alamsta, or was this another case of my expectations blinding me to an opportunity?”

The First Protector took a moment to reply, as though he had been expecting more questions from me. “You were entirely right to think that she only meant you ill; whether or not you might still have learned anything useful from her, I cannot say.” After another moment, he continued, “That you thought to ask the question is good; it shows that you have learned from your earlier mistakes, whether you think so or not.”

A moment later, Alamsta burst in behind me. I hadn’t realized until then that she even knew where the Reliquary was.

The First Protector addressed Alamsta. “It is time for the Young Protector to return to his own world, alone, that he may set his affairs in order there before he returns here for the coming Final Confrontation.”

This did not sit well with Alamsta, but she bowed to the inevitable and in another moment, I was back in my apartment.

Hmmmm. It sounded like I needed to give my landlord notice. I glanced through the mail and found another few things that would need doing…

…But taking care of them is part of another story.

THUS ENDS

The Return of the Medallion

Being the Seventeenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

THE STORY CONTINUES WITH

King Under the Mountain

Being the Eighteenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion


End file.
